Fairy Tales

Simple narratives, typically involving supernatural beings or improbable events, settings, or characters, either of folk origin or individually authored in a style reminiscent of the folk tradition.

Fairy tales and folk tales fall into six major categories, such as cumulative tales, based on a repetitive action that builds to a climax (as in "The House That Jack Built") and pourquoi tales, which purport to explain the origin of certain customs or traits (for example, "how the leapard got his spots"), as well as those containing supernatural elements, which are usually called fairy tales. One of the standard categories of folktale is the "realistic tale," which implies that all the other types—not just fairy tales—contain some measure of fantasy. For example, one of these categories, the beast tale, by definition includes fantasy elements. Even if they are not unique in their inclusion of...